M. D. Smith challenges a dogma

It was refreshing to read Kevin Anderson’s forthright opinions on the post-Stern bandwagon (Climate change in a myopic world, SPA March 2007).

The ‘inconvenient truth’ is that it is the energy profligacy of our western way of life which is the cause of greenhouse warming. Those who believe that, with just a few minor, painless adjustments we can continue on our merry way while the rest of humanity catches up, and still avoid dangerous climate change, need to think again.

If there is a central dogma of modern political life, it is this: economic growth is good; more economic growth is better; limitless economic growth is best of all. Anyone from outside political life who questions the central dogma faces accusations of ‘not living in the real world’.

Why is this? For decades, free-market economists and big business have hammered home their message that quality of life increases in direct proportion to economic and material wellbeing. So good a job have they done that most of the western world believes it to be true. Comparative studies of mental health, however, suggest otherwise: if anything, we are less happy now than our parents’ and grandparents’ generations were 50 years ago.

Science has a message for all of us, politicians, economists and consumers alike: the real ‘real world’ is entirely indifferent to our economic wellbeing; the real ‘real world’, indeed, is indifferent to our very existence. A life with less may be a happier life. It is certainly better than no life at all.

M. D. Smith
Selby, North Yorkshire